Good Morning rache,

Of course journalists have to be held to account.
I remember the good old days when
great journalists like George Negus, Ian Leslie, and
Ray Martin did a splendid job. Today, we have journalists
like Patricia Karvelas, Laura Tingle, Fran Kelly, Peter
Hartcher, Stan Grant, Chris Uhlmann, Andrew Probyn, to
name just a few, who strive to lift the bar.

I guess its the newbies out to make names for themselves
that give the others a bad name.

G'day again BP,

"the evolutive and the static", I must disagree, I don't believe that anything in existence is "static", everything is constantly evolving, both in the physical world, and within the philosophical world of mankind. The great mountain evolves, granted, at a slower rate than the adult Mayfly but never the less it to is changing/evolving just as the Mayfly is, as do ideas and beliefs that exist within the human spirit. I see conservatism by its very nature as an impossible position, not as a complementary position to progress, but as a reactive position, where if the progressive idea has just merit it will eventually succeed.

Communism is a prime example of a progressive idea that failed, not because conservatism said it was a bad idea, but because it could not sustain itself in a practical sense.

Foxy,
I remember in the days of ‘good old’ when a leading ABC journalist rode intrepidly into the front line when the Afghans were fighting the Russian invaders, he shewed us a knocked out Russian tank and won great praise for his reporting.
Reality was that the tank was an old Indian Army Centurion that was a static target on an Indian tank and artillery range.
No one at the ABC was interested in the truth.

I forgot to mention that he rode in on a Ferguson tractor.

Hi Issy,

I suppose you'll be cleaning up after the election, just like last time. Have you got your mop and bucket at the ready.

ps; Are the Shooters and Hooters running? If so are they blasting away with their policy of "Free guns for everyone". I like what Elephant Bob said; "every child deserves a loaded gun", did you not find that touching, Elephant Bob is thinking of the little children.

If the Shooters and Hooters are running, lets hope they keep running and don't stop.

This is comming to you from God's Waiting Room, aka the RSL. Have had a few "blacks", good company, good band, good night.

.

Dear Paul1405,

.

You wrote :

« "the evolutive and the static", I must disagree, I don't believe that anything in existence is "static", everything is constantly evolving, both in the physical world, and within the philosophical world of mankind. The great mountain evolves, … as do ideas and beliefs that exist within the human spirit. »
.

Yes, I understand your reasoning, Paul, but I obviously owe you a more detailed explanation of what I mean by “the evolutive and the static” to enable you to put things in the perspective I am endeavouring to describe.

What I have in mind when I refer to “the evolutive” is Jacques Monod’s definition of life :

“Life is a spontaneous, evolutive, sensitive and reproductive process triggered by the fortuitous encounter of complementary elements of matter and energy in a favourable environment” (chance in this context means a “random variable” and necessity an “inevitable” event).

By “static” I mean non-living matter such as earth, rocks, and water, whose transformation depends on external factors.

As these two categories of existence, “the evolutive and the static” are mutually complementary and interactive, they combine in a harmonious equilibrium in the natural world.

It is this natural process that prompted my metaphor of the necessary coexistence of what I consider to be a form of mankind’s metaphysical dualism : progressivism (the evolutive) and conservatism (the static).

“Know thyself” commands the ancient Delphic maxim. I certainly don’t see myself as a paragon of wisdom, planted precisely in the middle between left and right on the ideological, moral, and political scale.

I tend to oscillate, depending on the issue under consideration, along a fairly broad band, ranging from progressivism to conservatism.

I am not scotched permanently and irremediably at any particular point on the ideological, moral, and political scale.

That is probably due to the fact that my weltanschauung and that of society do not always coincide as perfectly as they, perhaps, should.

I hope this helps clarify matters for you, Paul.

.